Ecology and Administration

The bureaucratic approach is primarily based on Weber’s ideal type of bureaucracy. Though this
model was quite useful for comparing the bureaucracies of the western countries it could not
serve the purpose for the developing countries. The reason being that the western countries had
stable polities and the conditions prevailing there resembled those assumed for “classic”
bureaucratic system suggested by Weber. Such were not the conditions prevailing in the under-
developed countries. So after the World War II when there was an urge to study the
administrative systems of developing countries the bureaucratic approach (based primarily on
‘structural’ & ‘functional’ aspects of bureaucracy) could not serve the purpose well. When the
technical assistance programmes etc. were started for the developing countries in post war times,
there was a natural curiosity on the part of the donor agencies to know what type of
administrative systems these developing countries had and whether they would be able to absorb
the kind of assistance being provided to them. Hence studies were started to study administration
of developing countries and the private foundations such as Ford Foundation sponsored such
studies. The features of administrative systems in these countries were quite different from those
of developed countries and approaches such as bureaucratic approach were found lacking. Thus
came the necessity for developing a new approach towards the comparative public
administration. Two approaches emerged as a result of this necessity. The first one was
ecological approach and the second one was the development administration approach.

The Ecological Approach to Comparative Public Administration

The basic assumption of ecological approach is that administration does not exist in vacuum.
Bureaucracy is one of the several basic institutions existing in the society. Thus inter-
relationships of bureaucracy with other sub-systems existing in the society is the crux to
understand its ‘structures’ and ‘functions’. These other sub-systems could be political, social,
cultural and economic etc. Bureaucracy as an administrative sub-system exists with these other
sub-systems in a society. Thus for understanding the structure, role and functions of bureaucracy,
the influence of these political, socio-cultural and economic sub-systems on bureaucracy and
vice-versa are to be studied. It has to be noted that in ecological approach two way interaction
between a system and its environment is considered i. e. it is not only the influence of the
external environment on the system but also the system’s modifying influence on the external
environment. Most of the scholars have concentrated on the social environmental influence on
the administrative sub-system rather than bureaucracy’s influence on the social environment. So
there is a need to develop a more balanced interactional analysis.

The ecological approach can be traced back to the writings of John M. Gaus whose work in turn
took inspiration from the sociologists. Gaus was primarily interested in knowing key ecological
factors for understanding the American Public Administration and he found some factors quite
useful e. g. people, place, physical & social technology, wishes & ideas, catastrophe &
personality. Robert Dahl, Roscoe Martin and Fred W. Riggs are other prominent writers in this
field. According to Riggs, only the studies which are empirical, nomothetic and ecological are
“truly” comparative. Ecological approach believes that as all plants cannot grow in all climates
similarly all administrative subsystems cannot be successful in all ecological settings.
According to Ferrel Heady, the environment of bureaucracy can be understood in terms of
“concentric circles” with bureaucracy at the center as shown below:

Since bureaucracy is most closely in interaction with the political sub-system, that’s why, the
circle depicting the political system is the innermost circle. Since the larger society can be
considered a general system it shown as the largest circle. The circle depicting economic sub-
system lies in between.

For doing a comparative analysis of different nations, they can be classified into some basic
categories based on some ‘decisive’ environmental factors. These factors could be of social and
economic nature. Based on this approach the different nations could be classified into
“developed” and “developing” countries. This approach uses “development” as the basis of
classifying various countries. However this approach does not put countries in two polar
extremes of “developed” and “developing”, rather the countries are located on a continuum, with
the former placed on upper scale of development and the latter on relatively lower scale of
development. This approach is called the development

administration approach. As can be seen the development administration approach itself is

largely ecological.

One of very important approaches in ecological analysis is "structural - functionalism". Riggs,

the foremost theorist in the field of comparative public administration has used this approach to
understand the administrative sub-systems in the context of ‘transitional societies’. We will first
study what is structural - functional approach and then move on to the Riggsian models & their
critiques.

The Structural - Functional Approach to Ecological Analysis

The structural - functional approach assumes that every function in society is performed by some
structure (or to be more precise ‘social structure’). A structure may perform different functions
and a function may also be performed by a combination of structures. In this approach a social
structure is considered as “any pattern of behavior which has become a standard feature of a
social system”. An interesting point is that structures may be “concrete” like governmental
departments etc. or may be “abstracts” like ‘structure of authority’.

The social structures having resemblance to each other in different environmental settings may
perform different functions and so if some society doesn’t have some particular structures then it
doesn’t mean that some functions would also be missing from that society. Also the social
structures are not always unifunctional. In traditional societies a structure may perform many
functions e. g. administrative & political functions are performed by more or less the same
institutions. All this shows that structures and functions do not have a one to one relationship
between them and the actual relationship should be determined by empirical research for
different contextual settings. This approach focuses on the ‘interactions’ among various
structures of the social system and of the social system with its external environment. According
to this approach there are some pre-requisite structures and functions for the survival of the
society. Riggs mentions five functional requisites for any society as well as for the administrative
sub-system:

1.  Economic

2. Social

3. Communicational

4. Symbolic

5. Political

It was Dwight Waldo in 1955 who first all suggested using the structural — functionalism in the
field of public administration. Ever since Riggs has been the foremost user of this approach.
Using this approach he came out with his Agrarian — Industrial typology and the models of
Fused-Prismatic-Diffracted societies. The structural - functional approach proves that though
indigenous structures and institutions of non-Western nations may prove to be dysfunctional
from the Western standards still they are functional in their own social settings. It will be further
discussed while discussing the Riggsian models.